Juno News - September 29, 2021


Taxpayer advocates launch campaign for Albertans to fight equalization


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

185.04597

Word count

1,838

Sentence count

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by the campaign director of Fight Equalization and the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to discuss the province of Alberta's campaign to remove the equalization formula from the constitution.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:00:05.280 and joining me now to talk about this campaign is the campaign director of fight equalization
00:00:13.020 also the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation kevin lacy kevin thanks
00:00:18.220 for coming on today andrew thanks for having me so we've got a few weeks left until the
00:00:23.320 referendum for those who haven't been following it here i know the question is about removing it
00:00:28.120 from the constitution but but fundamentally what is really at play here for people fundamentally it's
00:00:33.740 about the unfairness of the equalization formula to the province of alberta and what the problem is
00:00:39.840 is that alberta for years has been contributing far more than we've been getting back and you
00:00:45.860 would think that that good that that contributing that amount of money would buy you some goodwill
00:00:50.980 that it would get you something in return and instead all we've gotten as a result of all
00:00:55.860 those contributions is we've seen our energy blocked in respect to pipelines we've battled with
00:01:02.060 british colombia and quebec both with regards to getting those pipelines built we've seen a carbon
00:01:07.900 tax from ottawa so we keep contributing and contributing and contributing and and being
00:01:13.620 generous yet at the same time uh provinces in the federal government are basically sticking it to us
00:01:20.020 uh and not and not giving us the things that we need to succeed yeah and i think quebec is a
00:01:26.000 particularly notable example of this the quebec government even an ostensibly conservative
00:01:30.520 government in quebec has come in with a very anti-canadian energy agenda and plan we have
00:01:36.160 the premier francois legault calling alberta oil dirty energy yet quebec still insists on the money
00:01:42.820 from alberta that only comes generally speaking because of the success of this sector well that's exactly
00:01:48.760 right and you know so the entire equalization envelope is about 20 billion dollars quebec gets
00:01:54.820 about 13 billion of that which means they get 65 percent of all the equalization dollars and to put
00:02:01.640 that in perspective each quebec resident that equals about fifteen hundred dollars per person that's a lot
00:02:08.700 of money that quebec is getting from the rest of canada at the same time then quebec while it takes this
00:02:14.920 amount of money uh from canada rejects canada's resources and rejects particularly alberta's
00:02:21.540 resources the one that's contributing a large portion of that money to it imagine if it was if
00:02:27.060 uh andrew you were meeting your friends and you were generous enough to uh provide them um some extra
00:02:34.720 little extra cash and then you ask them for a little favor and they told you to go to go pound sand
00:02:39.100 that's essentially what quebec is doing to alberta and for years we've cut alberta's just kind of put
00:02:45.120 up with it and sure they've made a few statements here and there this goes way back to peter laugheed
00:02:50.000 in the 1980s uh when laugheed uh during both the charlatan accord and the mitch lake accord put his foot
00:02:56.180 down and said that alberta wasn't going to contribute more than their fair share uh but yet it continued
00:03:01.600 uh then ralph klein came in he stood up to ottawa but then the payments kept continued uh after klein
00:03:09.120 then the government changed and even premier notley who was an ndp uh premier she put her foot down and
00:03:15.460 said this equalization formula is not fair to alberta and nothing ever changed so to jason kenny's credit
00:03:21.720 uh the current premier of alberta uh he's decided that look enough is enough uh we can keep going to
00:03:29.060 canada and complaining about the equalization form and complaining about what quebec saying
00:03:33.360 but we're not getting anywhere so we need to go out and have this referendum which is happening on
00:03:38.360 october 18th and show canada that albertans are mad that their money is being mistreated and they want
00:03:45.300 to see real change and to be honest at this point i'm not sure what is really left for the government
00:03:50.600 of alberta to do they're really at a last straw and this is a last ditch effort to try to make some
00:03:56.280 real changes is the issue the formula for equalization or the existence of equalization
00:04:02.280 itself with the caveat for those not familiar that actually getting rid of it would require
00:04:07.160 a constitutional amendment but amending the formula is actually relatively simple yeah i think the i think
00:04:13.060 for us in particular what we want to see is reform of the system uh and we also i think a lot of this
00:04:19.160 andrew is actually political which is we want to assert uh what the grievance of alberta is in the
00:04:26.160 hope that recipient provinces will understand the position of the province and start to embrace some
00:04:32.660 of the things uh that is allowing this money to come into their province so really what i think we're
00:04:37.920 looking for is some goodwill on behalf of many of these premiers uh who are sticking it to alberta
00:04:43.460 um so reform is part of it the the equalization question actually asks do we support removing the
00:04:50.380 constitution uh removing equalization from the constitution um and i think that's really the
00:04:56.880 whole point of that is to just kind of lay the marker for what alberta expects in the upcoming years
00:05:02.500 with regards to continued negotiations on equalization yeah and one thing that i think is important to
00:05:08.860 point out here is that alberta has obviously had some great times over the years but
00:05:12.600 in the last few years with a downturn in the sector uh the oil and gas sector which is the the
00:05:17.900 predominant source of wealth in alberta things have been a bit tough but the province has still
00:05:21.960 been on the hook for equalization in those uh in those more difficult years yeah and that's been a
00:05:26.680 really tough pill to swallow because you haven't like over the last six and a half year alberta has
00:05:32.180 really had a rough go and many you know at one point we were in double digits in unemployment
00:05:37.040 one of the highest unemployment rates in all of canada highest unemployment rates in all of canada
00:05:42.280 um so we've had a really rough time some of that is as a result of uh poor man poor policies out of
00:05:49.560 ottawa some of that is also uh related outside the border which is just the cost of energy um the price
00:05:56.740 of oil um but family severe had a really hard time they had the province has not had the money to fund
00:06:03.420 say schools and hospitals uh and building new roads yet they see down uh a few you know down a few
00:06:11.540 flights away in quebec things are going really really well and meanwhile our money when it's
00:06:16.960 needed here at home is going to a province like quebec which is which doesn't need it so that's
00:06:22.660 the type of reform that i think um we need to see and i think if you're one of those families that's
00:06:27.820 struggling to make ends meet and watching your tax dollars go to other parts of the country while at
00:06:32.140 the same time your schools are suffering um you've got a big problem with that yeah and and i know that
00:06:38.340 just looking at the numbers here you mentioned how much the average quebecer or how much it works
00:06:42.740 out to be on average that a quebecer is receiving from this on the flip side of it you have the
00:06:47.520 average albertan uh being uh being having to pay six hundred dollars i believe it is on this three
00:06:53.340 billion dollars a year that the province is spending and if you're an alberta taxpayer that's
00:06:57.500 three billion that's not going to fix the roads that's not going into the health care system which
00:07:01.420 we've been hearing a lot about in alberta that's not going into schools that's a lot of money
00:07:05.360 yeah and then the fiscal situation here isn't that hot either um and you know that's maybe a
00:07:11.240 debate for another show of how we ended up there um but given that's that alberta families are
00:07:16.980 struggling themselves and i think if we most families and most albertans are willing to be
00:07:22.520 generous with the rest of the country they have been for for many many years um but given these
00:07:27.480 tough times when everyone else is cutting back the equalization formula actually with the way it's set
00:07:33.580 up is going to increase over the next few years so this commitment um that albertans are under at a
00:07:39.380 time when they don't have any money is actually just increasing um and that may puts a strain on
00:07:44.400 the public services even higher uh and makes it more difficult to take that these that this money is
00:07:49.420 being sent to ottawa so let's talk about the the campaign itself i'm assuming you're doing more than
00:07:54.060 just chatting with me although i love having you on the show uh what are you going to be doing
00:07:57.820 between now and october 18th so we've launched uh a separate we're we've launched a separate society
00:08:03.700 called society for um albertans against equalization uh we're going to be heading out and campaigning on
00:08:09.800 the road uh trying to convince albertans to vote yes in this referendum um to remove equalization
00:08:16.140 from the constitution uh we've just launched new radio ads um that are on our website feel free to
00:08:21.920 check them out um that are uh that are talking about this issue our new billboards will be going
00:08:27.040 up later on in the week um and we'll be continuing to do things like you and i are doing today and
00:08:31.940 just to try to talk to more and more canadians and more and more particularly albertans about getting
00:08:36.920 out to vote on october 18th voting yes in the uh referendum and finally standing up for alberta so
00:08:44.820 that alberta can make a stand and don't continually see our money go uh to when our money is not
00:08:51.000 respected and what constitutes a win for you on this i think look i think we're going to have to
00:08:57.340 see election night what the win is um these cause let's be honest uh referendums in canada are always
00:09:03.880 unpredictable and there's a lot of uh politics going on in alberta that's far uh outside of the
00:09:10.820 referendum um but really anything over 50 is a victory for us yeah that's the majority of albertan
00:09:16.540 saying that they can't really abide by the status quo so very well said you can find out
00:09:20.980 more about the campaign at fightequalization.ca kevin lacy is the campaign director and alberta
00:09:26.680 director for the canadian taxpayers federation kevin thanks for coming on today good to talk
00:09:30.800 to you as always thanks for having me thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support
00:09:35.100 the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news
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